Passengers of a domestic Delta flight from San Francisco to New York were told to show their identity documents to uniformed agents of the Customs and Border Protection agency upon their arrival at John F. Kennedy airport on Wednesday evening.

CBP agents inspected passenger identifications on the jetbridge by the door of the aircraft. A CBP spokesman insisted to Rolling Stone that this action is “nothing new” and that there is “no new policy.”

“She was weirded out by it,” he says. The agents, O’Rourke says, said nothing to him, but took his ID and scrutinized it for nearly 30 seconds before letting him pass. He describes the experience as “a little bit alarming.” Only later did O’Rourke find himself asking, “Why is a customs agent doing this search? The flight didn’t enter from another country.”

In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesperson for CBP said the agency had been asked “to assist in locating an individual possibly aboard Delta flight 1583” who had been “ordered removed by an immigration judge.” The spokesman added that CBP agents “requested identification from those on the flight” but that ultimately “[t]he individual was determined not to be on the flight.”

Rolling Stone asked CBP to point to its statutory authority to stop and examine the identity documents of deplaning domestic passengers. The spokesman sent a link to a document titled CBP Search Authority. The document refers to CBP’s authority to inspect international arrivals.

…Rolling Stone asked CBP to clarify whether the CBP document search was truly a “request” – or instead a legally binding demand by the agents. The spokesman again could not clarify CBP’s legal authority, warning only, “It is always best to cooperate with law enforcement, so as to expedite your exiting the airport in a timely manner.”

Rolling Stone asked the New York Civil Liberties Union for its understanding of the law in this incident. NYCLU Staff Attorney Jordan Wells writes that “CBP does not have carte blanche to refuse to let people off a domestic flight until they show ID.” His advice: “While one may choose to produce identity documents to avoid further hassle, it is important to remember that in the United States people have a constitutionally protected right to remain silent.”

Even if the CBP agents were seconded to ICE–which has far-reaching authority within 100 miles of a border (and Congress might want to revisit that)–surely, not every passenger had to be scrutinized thoroughly: there must have been some people who didn’t resemble the suspect in any way.

I’m old enough to remember when “Papers, please” was something that happened routinely* in other countries, with far fewer freedoms. In the U.S., we were able to move around without being interrogated. This is not good, and this is not normal.

Related:Muhammad Ali Jr., son of the boxer, was detained when he returned to the U.S. and questioned about his religious identity.

*Of course, lower-class minorities in certain areas were–and still are–routinely interrogated by our internal security forces just by virtue of traveling from one place to another.